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Fraud couple John and Anne Darwin have been jailed today for staging a death in a canoe accident to swindle £250,000 from insurance and pension companies.

The 56-year-old wife was convicted by a jury at Teesside Crown Court of six counts of fraud and nine of money laundering today, while the husband admitted fraud at an earlier hearing.

Anne Darwin received six and a half years in jail. Her husband got six years and three months.

Standing together in the dock it was the first time they had been together in months. Mr Darwin looked down and Mrs Darwin simply stared straight ahead.

Mr Justice Wilkie said: “The duration of the offending, its multi-faceted nature and in particular the grief inflicted over the years to those who in truth were the real victims, your own sons, whose lives you crushed, make this a case which merits a particularly severe sentence.”

The Darwins concocted a plan to enable them to spend the rest of their lives in Panama.

The Darwin’s hideaway in Panama was threatened as Mr Darwin could not get a visa for his false personality John Jones. In order to remain he needed a visa in his real name.

So the pair decided Mr Darwin would head back to England claiming he had lost his memory while she remained in Panama.

According to the plan, mapped out on his computer, he would go to a police station, claiming amnesia, and eventually get his identity back. Then he could head back to Panama to be with his supposedly delighted wife who had been mourning all these years.

But the plan was blown out of the water by a picture showing them at a real estate agent’s in Panama in 2006.

Andy Greenwood, chief investigating officer, said even more information could come to light.

“I don’t think we’ve got to the bottom of this – there will be more stories coming to light.

“For my mind Anne Darwin has been a compulsive liar.”

Mr Greenwood said the Darwins worked as a team from the moment they realised they were going bankrupt.

“John was the maths teacher behind the equation and Anne was the English teacher and they worked as a team.”

It’s believed the reason Mrs Darwin didn’t plead guilty was the hope that she would be able to get off and sell the story and not lose her money.

But now police are determined to strip the Darwins of all their ill-gotten gains and prevent them from selling their story.

Mr Greenwood said the way the Darwins had treated their sons Mark and Anthony was “absolutely disgusting”. He revealed the sons were initially under suspicion.

“The general belief was how can the sons not know? But the more we investigated the more we realised they didn’t know a thing.”

Neither of the couple’s sons showed emotion at the verdict.

Further information came out about Mr Darwin’s false identity, John Jones. Jones was a five-week-old baby who died in 1950, and Mr Darwin was able to find the birth certificate and apply for a passport.

The family of baby Jones attended the trial and were said to be very upset.